Meditations of the Heart (Thurman) Section 3 Day 15

If I had known that my desire for company, for companionship, for community might not be fulfilled, would I have agreed to become a corporal body?

If I were really able to elect whether to come to live on earth, would I have chosen this if I knew that not only happiness but also the days of sadness and loneliness ahead of me?

Did I know it and choose anyway?

Carolyn Myss, in her concept of sacred contracts, says we each make an agreement with God in the realm before life on earth regarding the things we will do, people we will meet, etc. But, the process of traveling through the birth canal erases our memory of the details of that agreement. She says we then spend our lives trying to figure out what is in that contract so we can fulfill it. Perhaps that’s why some of us flounder around from relationship to relationship, job to job, degree to degree seeing which one fits. Some of us have an intuitive sense of what we’re to do and don’t believe it, heading off into other directions.

Rev. Howard Thurman says everyone wants community in our most original heart and mind. “The key to community”, he says, “must be fashioned of a common understanding of life, a common faith, a common commitment.” Yet, even as we desire companionship of others we none the less need time for solitariness. Community, Thurman says, builds outward from the individual to include more and more people. Always a person is driven to do something about his personal relationships to maintain free and easy access to persons who are significant to him and, through them, share deeply in community. Thurman says this is ‘the very stuff upon which the soul of man feeds: for it is the door though which he enters into the Holy of Holies where God dwells.” So, if I heard that right, in community we find God.

JD Martin has a song called “One Heart” whose opening line says “There’s a new church on the horizon made of light not of stone calling out to all creation, you are not alone.” It goes on to sing that all of us with all our sins, foibles and relationships are one heart.

I think I must have known, before I incorporated into this body, that I would one day sing that song with JD and his wife Jan; so, yes I must have chosen to come looking for community.